One of the most important organizational developments in recent years has been the significant growth in project work across different sectors and industries. Academic research confirms this development and recent industry reports also highlight the growing importance of project, programme and portfolio management practices to organizations. Moreover, whilst different industry surveys continue to highlight the familiar problems of product quality, missed deadlines and budget overruns, the same surveys also highlight the need for a more strategic approach towards the management of projects and a greater focus on the value and benefits that projects and programmes contribute to organizations. Within the project management literature however, the product creation view of projects still prevails and there is now a need to augment this view with other relevant perspectives linked to the developing world of 21st century projects. Against this background, this paper presents a new perspective on projects and programmes as value creation processes, a much broader perspective than the classical view of temporary production. Based on the work of the late Richard Normann, the core ideas are presented in the form of a conceptual framework and these are then illustrated in relation to recent practice within a large integrated food group in the UK. A number of conclusions are then drawn including some practical suggestions on how the framework might be used in practice.

In research on customer loyalty in services, satisfaction has often been mentioned as an important determinant. However, empirical evidence concerning the relationship between loyalty and satisfaction has remained equivocal. This may be even more so for services that are delivered over an extended period of time in which consumers actively take part. We propose that for the extended service experience consumers are motivated by the realisation of values and that attainment of these values affects patronage decisions. Moreover, as the service delivery process is extensive we argue that consumer mood during the service delivery is another important factor that may have an impact on loyalty deliberations. Therefore, in this paper we examine the simultaneous effect of satisfaction, value attainment and positive mood in an extended service setting. The results reveal that the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty with respect to extended services is moderated by value attainment and positive mood. More specifically, the satisfaction-loyalty association is strongest when consumers perceive that the service does not help them in the attainment of instrumental values and when low positive moods are experienced. In contrast, the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty is weakest when the service helps consumers in attaining their values and when they experience a positive mood. This signifies that value attainment and positive mood do indeed play an additional role in explaining customer loyalty. An important implication is that value attainment and positive mood may function as a buffer for diminishing loyalty as a result of lower levels of service satisfaction.